Shakespeare the Reviser

The project researches the difference between a revision vs. a rewriting. The book explores the English poems and plays of the Early New English period, from the sixteenth to the beginning of seventeenth century, with over 50 entries examined. The main material is the poem 'A Lover's Complaint'; the play Double Falsehood by Lewis Theobald; the revised and rewritten post-Restoration plays such as Richard II (revised by Lewis Theobald), and The Fatal Secret (rewritten Webster's The Duchess of Malfi) by Lewis Theobald. An example of authorial revision is Sonnets 2 and 138.